Derek Twigg
Main Page: Derek Twigg (Labour - Halton)Department Debates - View all Derek Twigg's debates with the Cabinet Office
(13 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is entirely right. If we want to tackle poverty, we must go to the causes of poverty. The chief cause of poverty is people being out of work generation after generation and, as he says, young people growing up in homes where nobody works, where there is no role model to follow. That is why we are pursuing the welfare reform agenda so vigorously, because we want to help people to get out of unemployment and into work. We want it to be worth while for everybody to work or to work more than they do now. That is what our welfare reforms, so scandalously neglected by the previous Government, have set out to achieve.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
Q2. The proposed £400 million Mersey Gateway project, which will create up to 4,000 new jobs in the area, is under threat because of the spending review, despite the fact that it is strongly supported by business and by all local authorities across Cheshire and Merseyside, including the Chancellor’s local authority. How will cutting projects such as the Mersey Gateway help economic growth in the north-west?
The Prime Minister
We are not making any further cuts in capital spending. The hon. Gentleman ought to ask the question of those on his own Front Bench. The Labour party went into the last election with a 50% cut in capital spending in its figures, and did not tell us one single project that would be cut. We have said that that is far enough; we should go no further. We will be protecting capital spending to help to boost the recovery in our country.